What fundamentally requires After Effects to have Orientation property in addition to Rotation?

Question

I just started to learn about 3D layers in After Effects and have seen a couple of tutorials on YouTube that explain how orientation and rotation properties are different, but I still quite don't understand the fundamental working of it. Most of these tutorials highlight some of the uses of having these properties but don't explain how they fundamentally differ.

I know that the three values under the rotation property of a 3D layer, tell about the angular position of a point on the layer as measured about the local axes that are centered at the anchor point.

What exactly the three values in the Orientation property telling?

ShiveringCactus · Answer

By having a single property for Orientation, I can use expressions to have the layers face each other. And it's also handy to be able to set a layer rotating using X,Y,Z but also be able to adjust the angle separately. For instance, if I want to create the planet Earth with it's 23° axis tilt AND have it rotate for day-and-night, then using both means it doesn't wobble (I think, it's been a while since I've done this)

I tend to prefer the rotation properties, but every so often orientation comes in handy.

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